


Moving On

by alittlebriton



Category: Alias (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-02
Updated: 2015-08-02
Packaged: 2018-04-12 15:45:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4485347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alittlebriton/pseuds/alittlebriton
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This takes place in the space between the Sevogda mission in S4 and the car crash that finishes S4.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moving On

The last time he saw her, she was leaving to wreak havoc on the CIA. Sliding a gun into her handbag. A brief kiss, already in business mode, not paying any attention to his wandering hands. She dismissed him and he didn’t forget.

The last time he saw her, she wasn’t her. She forgave him and he slipped up, not used to her empathy. And then she was Sydney and it hit him like cold water over raw flesh: relief that she wasn’t dead. That she might get him out.

The last time he saw her, she was dead. Cold and still with her glacial beauty, like Snow White in her glass coffin. Waiting for her kiss.

The last time he saw her, she wasn’t her. She was Sydney, and he got to kiss her then, just once, his blood a sacrifice to something, but it didn’t make her real.

There have been too many last times, and with each one she becomes sullied somehow. So now that she is standing before him with that smile twitching her mouth and her eyes promising everything, it is understandable that the first thing he does is grab her arm and twist it behind her back.

“Who are you?” he hisses in her ear as he slams her over the table.

“Mmmm”, she purrs. “I see you haven’t forgotten how I like it.”

He slams her down again, and repeats himself, twisting harder.

“Who are you?”

She pants with the force of his hold.

“It’s me. I promise. Remember that time… in Canada. I slipped in that… alley and cut my hand on a piece of metal. It was jutting out of… the wall that we were fucking against. Check my hand. Check it. Scars are hard to fake.”

He hauls her back up and twists her wrist the other way, ignoring her intake of breath. The scar is light and silvery and he knows then. It’s her.

Sark releases her and steps back. Folds his arms. He didn’t trust her then, and too much has gone on for him to trust her now.

She licks her lips and rubs her wrist.

“You always did do that too hard.”

“Funny. I thought you liked that.”

“You thought wrong.”

He rolls his lips inward, the facial equivalent of a shrug, and leans against the table.

“I suppose I have you to thank for the invitation here.” He gestures at the lavish décor as if it were Ikea furniture. “And I suppose I have something you want.”

“Quick as ever. And you are the something we want.” She’s back to her infuriating ice-maiden routine, the one reserved for people who don’t know her, and he thinks that maybe he’s become one of them. Ten months is a long time to grieve. Really, you do start to move on after the first month.

He shakes himself out of his reverie, aware that he’s been staring at her mouth, and quirks his eyebrow at her. There’s that smile again.

“We?” he echoes.

“Come with me.” She turns, still rubbing her wrist, and he follows her out the room and down the corridor. He keeps his eyes on her hands, but lets his glance wander over her fully every few seconds. Navy pinstripe suit with a pencil skirt. Quite the businesswoman.

She turns to the left then stops outside a closed door and knocks. Without even waiting for an answer, she goes in and he follows, stopping inside the door and leaning against the wall. He looks at the figure in the room for a beat. Then -

“McKenas. How wonderful to see you again. I thought you had gone into hiding.”

“Always the joker, Mr. Sark. Nice suit, by the way. Jermyn Street or Saville Row? Stupid question. Betcha you were surprised to see the lovely Miss Reed again. But you know, she was just to valuable to our organisation to simply be allowed to die.”

“It’s good to know my inheritance was enough to guarantee me a spot in a federal penitentiary.” Cole laughs in that staccato way of his.

“Well, Elena and I were never too sure that you were really a team player. But Miss Reed here assures me that you with behave yourself. We have big plans.” Elena? Shit, he should have known another Derevko would be behind the Covenant.

“But then of course Irina got free and came back from the supposed dead and now she’s messed everything up for the rest of us. So”, he claps his hands together and stands up, crossing the room to stand in front of Sark, “we figured it was time for a little pay back. Find Pigtails and her little family and make them pay. You in?” He rocks on his heels and grins inanely at Sark , and he is again reminded how unhinged Cole is.

“You want to track down Irina Derevko, along with Jack and Sydney Bristow, because they faced Elena and won? You don’t think that that was clue to, perhaps, leave them alone for a while? Maybe start doing business with mainly Asian cartels?”

Cole slaps him on the back.

“Oh, how I’ve missed your British sense of humour, Julian. But you will help us. Or Miss Reed will die for a second time - while you watch.” Cole lets his gun slip from his suit sleeve into his hand, something that Sark notices without even taking his eyes from Cole’s.

Lauren’s sharp intake of breath is all he needs to stop his fantasies of slamming Cole’s face through his skull. He turns his head to look at Lauren, eyes wide, and he doesn’t think it’s an act. McKenas is just insane enough to do it too, just to prove a point. He smirks for the first time since seeing her, and her eyes flash.

“I’m in”, he says, holding her gaze. A beat. Then -

“Wonderful! I knew we would be together again, just like one big happy family. Now why don’t you two crazy kids run along. I’m sure you have a lot of catching up to do.” And the insane man winks at him.

 

Lauren drives as she always did, with less finesse than most, and wordlessly she leads him to his hotel. He’s not surprised that she knows which room he’s staying in either, these things are so easy to find out and it’s not like she’s without contacts these days.

Once inside, he stalks over to the bar and pours himself a drink. He doesn’t offer her one.

“So. Talk.”

She throws her bag on a chair and smoothes back her blond locks, taking a moment to push whatever resentment she harbours towards McKenas for that little stunt to the back of her mind.

“It’s quite pathetic really. How trusting Sydney was. Why on earth would _I_ want her to know about her mother’s supposed death? Of course it was meant to drive a wedge between her and her father and put her off Elena’s trail. It’s like she doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘set-up’.” She curls her lip scornfully.

“Yes, I already managed to gather that you put someone through the Helix procedure.” I do have an IQ higher than yours, you know, he thinks. “ What I really want to know is what happened to Irina.”

“Poor baby”, she croons, walking towards him. “Still holding out a hope she’ll take the place of your dead mother.” He stares back at her impassively. She smiles in his face.

“We held her, doubled her. Jack Bristow killed her after we convinced him she wanted Sydney dead. Somehow they found out, and now Elena is dead, and with her, her plans to hold the world to ransom.”

“And now we find them and make them pay.” It isn’t a question. His voice is flat and shows no emotion, but his eyes let her know he likes her body being nearer his. He watches her smile to herself, still so beautiful.

He puts his drink to one side, his interest in whisky forgotten for now. He reaches out and pulls her close.

“Tomorrow it appears we have work to do. However shall we amuse ourselves until then?”

Backing her onto the bed, he knows she wants it hard and brutal, the way she is used to it. She loved to scream, in both pain and pleasure. But this time, he isn’t in such a giving mood.

He moves slowly, so slowly, peeling off her jacket and then her skirt, hands skimming over her stockings to reach up to pull her top over her head. She pants in frustration and he smiles cruelly, dipping his head to hide it. He knows that what she wants is his hands around her throat, tightening inexorably as he slides into her, cutting off her circulation until she comes, shrieking.

But not tonight. Tonight is for him.

He traces his lips over her skin, which shrinks from his gentleness and she squirms under him, prey caught by the superior hunter. He removes lace from her body softly, reaching under her to unclasp her bra and then inches her panties down her thighs, kissing the path he makes with his fingers.

He pauses only to remove his shirt and trousers, unbuttoning hastily and throwing his own underwear off. Pale skins matches pale skin under the lamp lights, and he knows how incestuous it looks. That was always part of the fun for them, twins of pain and pleasure. Narcissists, both.

He runs his hands up her legs, parting her thighs, and his fingers easily slip inside her. Then, and only then, does he kiss her, bending over her body to slide his tongue between her lips. She tastes as she always has, of lemons and cream. He drops his mouth to her breasts, her body unmarred by the bullet wounds etched on his memory. He pushes into her and ignores her sigh of pleasure, stilling himself to feel her walls clench around him, trying to draw him in. Always a battle.

He starts to move, as slowly as he undressed her, and she reaches up her arms to draw him back down. He lets her kiss him, trying to dominate him with her tongue, but he is the one on top and he is pinning her down to make sure it stays that way. He grabs her hands and pins them above her head, and she grins at him, so sure she’s about to get it hard like she wants. But he just smiles back and continues to grind into her, skin whispering against skin. He has the night planned down to the last detail, and his plans have been more successful these days.

 

 

He leaves her sleeping and grabs her PDA, speeding through the contacts. Interesting to know how much Lauren has been learning since she supposedly died. Interesting to learn what had gone on. Elena was very smart indeed to have kept Irina’s capture from him; no matter if she had allowed him to languish in a cell for two years, she was still the closest thing he had to family.

Sark watches her chest rise and fall rhythmically in her sleep. He had loved her, that was pretty much real, or as near real as he could get. His first, dangerous love. The feeling that he had for Alison were different; they belonged to a different person, a boy. But still, sometimes he regretted that innocence, the unwavering belief that everything was going to turn out ok. With Lauren, nothing was that predicable. He wondered if not being so pleased about that meant that he was getting old.  
  


Dawn finds him blinking in the sun, sprawled out on the chair facing the bed. He doesn’t bother to wake her, instead choosing to shower and dress in silence and with care. When she wakes, and reached for him, he resists the urge to laugh at how she thinks they can slip right back into it, that he hasn’t changed at all. Time makes fools of us all.

He negotiates around her embrace, sliding his lips over her forehead then straightening up.

“Business first.”

“You never used to be this way.”

“Then I didn’t mind people trying to kill me or the people I worked with. Now I’m happier knowing that people who want to harm me are dead.”

She sits up, letting the sheets pool in her lap and yawns.

“Then the game is over and it’s no fun.” She pads to the bathroom.

Then the game is over and you’ve _won_ , he replies in his head, and turns away.

She takes him to an airfield and they join McKenas on a small plane.

“Prague”, he says to Sark’s unspoken question. The lovely Miss Derevko has been spotted there. Let’s go see what toys she can bring to the table.”

Lauren lays out the plan, which essentially to use Sark as bait. He smiles at the fact that some things don’t change.

“I see we’re doing this one at a time. Wouldn’t it make more sense, to, I don’t know, blow up APO and then tackle the hard one?”

“We’ll do it this way to cause more pain. Poor Sydney will never get over the fact that she lost her mother as soon as she found her again.” The venom in Lauren’s voice surprises him, but then, she’s never been one to let a slight go.

“Who-ee! Pigtails really got your knickers in a twist, didn’t she?” Lauren shoots McKenas a look that would cause other men to fall to their knees and weep.

“Then we’ll take them out, one at a time, until Sydney Bristow is a vulnerable heap on the floor.” He feels the need to keep the peace. He isn’t sure how long they have been working together, just the two of them at the helm of whatever team Elena left, but enough time with Cole makes you want to kill him and he would shoot you soon as look at you. The last thing he wants is a stand-off on a plane. He’s tired of those.  
  
He retreats to the back of the plane and makes the call.  
  


Although, eight hours later, he wishes that they had just shot each other. It would have spared him so many headaches, the ones just behind the eyes that are mainly caused by incessant noises. Which is practically the definition of Cole.

He runs a hand over his face, and thinks of the many ways to kill people without making a sound. Things that are soothing. When he looks over at the pair of them, still bickering over exactly how to hunt down Irina it is all he can do to not break out in laughter.

“Irina will find me.” They both look at him in surprise. It is the first thing he has volunteered since they got off that tiny juddering plane.

“You think that I could be in the same city as her for more than two hours and she wouldn’t know about it?” Lauren sniffs.

“Touching. Why is she here? It isn’t exactly a hotbed of terrorist activity.”

“It’s old. Irina always did like old cities.”

“The buildings, the romance”, chips in Cole. Sark shoots him a withering look.

“The artefacts.” He finishes sliding a clip into his Sig and slips extras around his person. It never hurts to be overly cautious when dealing with a Derevko.  
  
"I'm going to go out to be seen.  That is the plan, yes?"  Cole nods.  
  
"Don't be too long."  
  
"I wouldn't dream of it."  He whistles as he walks away and when he is around the corner, removes the bug that Lauren slipped under his lapel when she kissed him goodbye.  Really, she can be so simple sometimes.  
  
Two hours later, he strolls back into the safe house, whistling the same tune, and ignores the betrayed look on Lauren's face.  
  


“Now that our trust issues are over with, let’s get acquainted with the nightlife. Shall we?” And he offers his arm to Lauren, who takes it, her lips curling as she imagines the violence to come. Sark knows from experience that she’ll already be wet, but she’ll hold off doing anything about her excitement until it is all over. She’s a professional.

Sark finds himself in a bar in the old Jewish quarter near the new Synagogue, with Lauren perched at the far end and Cole outside the back. He waits, reads a book and sips his pilsner. This really couldn’t be so easy.

“The company you keep says a lot.”

Sark folds his book and looks up at Irina, standing over him with a motherly worried expression on her face.

“As does yours.” She looks a little startled by that, but then seems to compose herself.

“You mean Sevogda. My sister always did have the big, dumb schemes.”

“If I had known, Irina…”

“You probably would have aligned yourself with her. You go where the power is, Sark. We’ve always known that. Although what you are doing with Cole…”

“You know what he wants.”

“Yes. But he won’t get it. You think I came here alone?”

Sark raises one eyebrow and smiles.

“You think I did?” She stares at him, then grins, teeth flashing like a wolf.

“Run”, is all she says, then she stands up in one fluid motion, turns over the table and starts shooting with a gun he never even saw. Good distraction, he thinks momentarily. Irina was never one to hide her light under a bushel.

He leaps past her, and runs over to Lauren, who has drawn her own weapon.

“No, we need to get out of here.” Behind him he can see about six men all drawing their weapons and moving towards them. He grabs her arm and practically throws them out the back of the bar. Cole is nowhere to be seen.

The run down the alley, randomly firing behind them as bullets tear past them, chipping the walls and concrete beneath their feet. He hears a scream and knows that one of Lauren’s bullets has found its mark. He veers down a side road, dodging tourists who scatter in alarm. He ducks into a small doorway to reload.

“Where are we going?” Lauren pants beside him.

“Anywhere but here. Back to the rendezvous point. If Cole is alive and smart, he’ll be there.”

They move out again, firing as they do, and start heading for Ná mestí Republiky. Turning a corner, Lauren gasps, and he turns back to see if she’s hurt.

Standing before them, gun in hand and looking as surprised as Sark feels, is Jack Bristow, staring at Lauren. Before his features can harden and he starts shooting, Sark spins and kicks the gun out of his hand, then smashes his elbow into his face. As Jack reels back, Sark grabs Lauren again, who is busy aiming.

“Huh uh”, he shakes his head at her, and pulls her into the crowd. They fight their way through, melting in with the tourists and the stag parties, still moving rapidly until they know that they are clear.

“What the hell?”, exclaims Lauren.

“Vengeful wives are not the kind of enemies we need right now. We are aborting this plan.”

She slaps him and he takes it, smiles and licks the blood from his mouth.

“Fine. We’ll find another way to make Bristow pay.” She looks at him and smiles. “Whatever are we going to do now, lover?” And her mouth crashes on to his, sucking on his bottom lip like a vampire, and he smacks into the wall behind him. Hands roam over his body and he reciprocates in kind before pushing her away.

“We need to find Cole.” She narrows her eyes, but steps back and pushes her gun into her waistband.

He links his hand with hers and they run into the busy night, looking like another drunk happy couple on holiday.

They find Cole in their safe house near the square, pacing and yapping into his phone. When he sees them he abruptly stops the conversation and snaps the phone shut, giving them a big grin.

“I was hoping you two kids would make it out of there.”

“What the hell happened to you?” Excellent, he is no longer the target of her anger.

“I saw trouble with a capital ‘t’. More armed men than you could shake a stick at, plus Derevko and Bristow? I figured it wasn’t worth dying for just yet.”

“But it was fine for us? You didn’t even warn us!”

“That‘s because this is my operation, Lauren, and not yours. Therefore you are expendable and I’m not. Comprende?”

She steps closer into his space, and Cole just rocks on his heels, grinning like a schoolboy.

“Maybe I want more of a buy in into this operation.”

“Then you’ll have to get rid of the third partner.” She holds his gaze, and then tips her head back and laughs.

Sark smiles, and blinks, and he barely sees Lauren’s gun smash into his temple.

 

He cracks his eyes open and tries to clear his head, which is throbbing nicely. He can see two black blurs pacing back and forth, and there is a ringing which resolves itself into heated voices.

“That was a not-so subtle hint to kill him. Did you have a blonde moment?”

“You know that he could be valuable. Not until I know everything he knows.”

“Sark was trained to withstand torture. You won‘t get anything out of him.”

“Not torture by someone you love. And trusted.”

“I think you underestimate his involvement with Derevko.” Sark hides a smile at this. Irina never tortured him. She watched while others did.

He rocks his arms experimentally. As expected, they are tied fast behind him to the chair he appears to have been placed upon. Uncomfortably. His legs aren’t in a better position.

Lauren throws her hands up in frustration, and he notes the silenced gun in her hand. She looks mildly unhinged, like this wasn’t part of her plan. It damn sure wasn’t part of his.

“You know, McKenas, I’m getting very tired of this. I have had a perfect shot at both Irina and Jack Bristow ruined, I have broken my shoe and been shot at.”

“You’re frustrated. I get that. If you want me to help you work some of that frustration out…”

Sark raises his head, looking forward to the slap that he is sure is coming Cole’s way. Instead, what he sees is Cole saunter towards Lauren, who smiles at him, and then this kiss that makes him want to vomit. Then there is a slight sucking sound and McKenas pulls back, a look of bewilderment crossing his features. Then he emits a groan and crumples inelegantly to the floor.

Sark blinks twice, and then sees the blood begin to seep from Cole’s chest and pool around him, and he realises that Lauren had the gun between them. He looks at her, every sense alerted.

Lauren stares down at the twitching body of McKenas Cole, and then raises her head to look at him. Her eyes are utterly calm.

“Come now, lover, you didn’t really think I would kill you before him?”

“Stranger things have happened.” Irina had taught him always to remain calm in the face of murderous women. Not actually taught, of course, more that he had learned in his own time that this was the advisable course of action.

“Of course, I’m still going to torture you. And then I probably will have to kill you, otherwise you’ll just hunt me down.”

“Why? Why don’t we just take over this cell that Cole has been running and ride off into the sunset?” It’s a long shot, but he thinks he’ll try.

“Because I don’t want there to be a ‘we’ in this equation! So many years it has been my mother, or Cole, or Elena, telling me what to do. I want to run this my way. And that involves knowing what you know to take Derevko down.”

He stares at her, and starts to laugh.

“What? What?!” She stalks over to him and punches him in the stomach. He doubles over coughing through his laughter.

“I’m sorry, Lauren, but the thought of you trying to take down Irina is really too priceless.” He starts to laugh again. She growls at him. She yanks his head back and there is a knife at his throat. His laughter dies on his lips.

“You were always stupid when it came to that family”, she hisses in his ear, and the prick of the knife punctures his skin. She pushes his head roughly forward and removes the knife, moving to stand before him.

She trails the knife down his cheek and over his collarbone, slicing here and there, blood-letting cuts that make him wince inwardly. On the surface he is still impassive, but she knows him better than that, and she smiles. She digs the point of the knife in over his left hip and then move it down to puncture the inside of his left thigh.

“Lover, did you never stop to think that maybe I had grown tired of this romance you seem to have your heart set on? You may be good in bed, but when it comes to being a partner in crime, you lack a little something.”

“Quite frankly, Lauren, you lacked a little something all round. Even Sydney Bristow was a better kisser than you are. One can’t blame Vaughn for choosing her over you. They say that he shot you four times at the end, without flinching. And then immediately ran back to her. So you were always second best, just like you feared.”

“You bastard.” Her jaw is clenched and raw fury emanates from her eyes. He thinks that he will die now, and part of him looks forward to the rest. She steps back and raises her gun, smiling cruelly. He hitches in his breath.

Then Lauren looks quizzically down at her chest and back up at him, her mouth forming an ‘oh’ of surprise, and she pitches forward on to the wooden floorboards. Sark looks up to find Jack Bristow standing in the doorway, and he doesn’t think he has ever been so glad to see the man in his life. If he was untied, he thinks he would hug him, although that might get him shot as well.

Jack looks at him casually as if he was looking at someone across a coffee table, not someone who is tied up and bleeding. Bleeding quite profusely.

“I was asked to kill her in case of any trouble.” Jacks turns around to go, and pauses to look back. Sark is aware of the slight pleading look on his face, and can’t be bothered to hide it.

“She said nothing about untying you”, Jacks throws at him, and Sark is amazed to see a small curve to Jack’s mouth as he exits the way he came, in silence.

Sark stares at the place that his unlikely saviour stood and starts to laugh softly.

“As a partner in crime, it appears you lack contacts”, he says to the empty room, and laughs harder. He wonders if it is grief, relief, or the crushing inevitability of insanity finally catching up with him. Of course, he’s stopped such merriment after the five hours it takes to untie himself. He does her the courtesy of taking her body back to England and burying her decently, unlike the CIA’s idea of a grave.

 

Five months later, he’s in Sao Paolo when he catches the eye of another British blonde. Really, you do start to move on after the first month.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: In case you are wondering, Jack and Irina are there in Prague due to a previous fic of mine, Pravda. This explains Sark's absence in Prague. Also I needed a reason why Sark would rescue Jack in S5 for no payment!


End file.
